Monday, August 27, 2012

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Laura Maylene Walter. Her debut short story collection, Living Arrangements (BkMk Press, 2011) received a National Gold 2012 Independent Publisher Book Award and a silver ForeWord Book of the Year award. Laura’s writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, The Writer, Inkwell, American Literary Review, Ohioana Quarterly, Flyway, Crab Creek Review, South Dakota Review, Cat Fancy (yes, Cat Fancy) and elsewhere. She was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize and her novel-in-progress was named a runner-up in the 2010 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Laura lives in Cleveland with her husband and their two cats. She works as a senior editor of a trade magazine and blogs about truth, fiction, and the writing life at lauramaylenewalter.com.

My First Great Expectations

There it was, in the back of the Writer's Digest magazine: a call for submissions for short stories
with “religious themes” for teenage readers. It just so happened that I had
recently written a story that fit those requirements. Granted, the religious
part revolved around the teenage protagonist doubting her own faith instead of
celebrating it, and the story featured a melodramatic abortion plotline and a
climax involving a broken compact mirror, but still. It seemed like a fit for
this particular publication, so why not submit?

The fact that I was only sixteen years old or that I’d never
submitted my writing anywhere save student writing contests didn’t discourage
me. With some help from the writing-advice books and magazines my mother kept
around the house, I put together a cover letter, filled out an SASE, and dropped
my story in the mail.

Several weeks later, I received a congratulatory letter and
a check for ninety dollars. I was delighted. The story I had originally reeled
off for my tenth-grade English class had been accepted by a real, paying
publication. I’d been told for years that I had talent, but here was proof in
the form of money and a byline. And while I’d heard time and time again that
rejection was a big part of the writing life, this acceptance seemed to suggest
otherwise. Maybe, I thought, I was the exception to the rejection rule.

I wasted no time in flipping through the trusty Writer's Digest again, where I found a
call for stories geared toward young horse lovers. I’d ridden horses my entire
life and had probably read every horse-related children’s book out there. How
hard could this be? All I had to do was write a new short story and send it
off. I wouldn’t say I was expecting
an acceptance, but it also would not have shocked me.

What came at last, of course, was a rejection. In addition
to pointing out that the voice of my story was “much too adult” for their
readership, the editor also dropped the dreaded “please read our publication to
see what we publish” line. Just like that, my grand plans to rocket through a writing
career without experiencing rejection fell apart. I felt embarrassed that I’d
ever thought I was immune to rejection, or that my writing was automatically
worthy of being published. Clearly, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I never repeated that first whirlwind acceptance. In fact, I
stopped submitting my fiction to non-student publications entirely and instead
focused on something more important: becoming a better writer.

But even if it happened too fast and gave me a surge of
overconfidence, I’m still grateful for that early acceptance. It taught me not
to be afraid to send my work to editors, and that some of them just might
connect with it. It taught me to submit professionally, to follow guidelines,
and to actually read the publications I wanted to break into. Above all, it
showed me that I could become a published writer – even if it didn’t always
happen on my own timeline.

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The Quivering Pen

The Quivering Pen's motto can be summed up in two words: Book Evangelism. The blog is written and curated by David Abrams, author of the novels Brave Deeds (Grove/ Atlantic, 2017) and Fobbit (Grove/ Atlantic, 2012), from his home office in Butte, Montana. It is fueled by early-morning cups of coffee, the occasional bowl of Cheez-Its, and a lifelong love of good books.